Tennis star Monica Seles reveals her diagnosis with myasthenia gravis
Monica Seles first noticed the symptoms of myasthenia gravis — a neuromuscular autoimmune disease she discussed during a recent interview with The Associated Press — while she was swinging a racket the way she'd done so many times during, and after, a career that included nine Grand Slam titles and a place in the International Tennis Hall of Fame.
'I would be playing with some kids or family members, and I would miss a ball. I was like, 'Yeah, I see two balls.' These are obviously symptoms that you can't ignore,' Seles said. 'And, for me, this is when this journey started. And it took me quite some time to really absorb it, speak openly about it, because it's a difficult one. It affects my day-to-day life quite a lot.'
The 51-year-old Seles, who won her first major trophy at age 16 at the 1990 French Open and played her last match in 2003, said she was diagnosed with myasthenia gravis three years ago and is speaking publicly about it for the first time ahead of the U.S. Open, which starts on Aug. 24, to raise awareness about what is known as MG.
The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke calls it 'a chronic neuromuscular disease that causes weakness in the voluntary muscles' and 'most commonly impacts young adult women (under 40) and older men (over 60) but ... can occur at any age, including childhood.'
Seles said she'd never heard of the condition until seeing a doctor and being referred to a neurologist after noticing symptoms such as double vision and weakness in her arms — 'just blowing my hair out ... became very difficult,' she said — and legs.
'When I got diagnosed, I was like, 'What?!'' said Seles, who is partnering with argenx, an immunology company headquartered in the Netherlands, to promote their Go for Greater campaign. 'So this is where — I can't emphasize enough — I wish I had somebody like me speak up about it.'
It's been three decades since Seles returned to competition at the 1995 U.S. Open, making it to the final, more than two years after she was attacked by a man with a knife at a tournament in Hamburg, Germany.
'The way they welcomed me ... after my stabbing, I will never forget,' Seles said about the fans in New York. 'Those are the moments that stay with you.'
She talks about learning to live a 'new normal' nowadays and characterized her health as another in a series of life steps that required adapting.
'I had to, in tennis terms, I guess, reset — hard reset — a few times. I call my first hard reset when I came to the U.S. as a young 13-year-old (from Yugoslavia). Didn't speak the language; left my family. It's a very tough time. Then, obviously, becoming a great player, it's a reset, too, because the fame, money, the attention, changes (everything), and it's hard as a 16-year-old to deal with all that. Then obviously my stabbing — I had to do a huge reset," Seles said.
'And then, really, being diagnosed with myasthenia gravis: another reset. But one thing, as I tell kids that I mentor: 'You've got to always adjust. That ball is bouncing, and you've just got to adjust,'' she added. 'And that's what I'm doing now.'
___
Howard Fendrich has been the AP's tennis writer since 2002. Find his stories here: https://apnews.com/author/howard-fendrich. More AP tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/tennis
Howard Fendrich, The Associated Press
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CTV News
4 hours ago
- CTV News
Hundreds may have been exposed to rabies at bat-infested cabins in Grand Teton National Park
Health officials are working to alert hundreds of people in dozens of states and several countries who may have been exposed to rabies in bat-infested cabins in Wyoming's Grand Teton National Park over the past few months. As of Friday, none of the bats found in some of the eight linked cabins at Jackson Lake Lodge had tested positive for rabies. But the handful of dead bats found and sent to the Wyoming State Veterinary Laboratory in Laramie for testing were probably only a small sample of the likely dozens that colonized the attic above the row of cabins, Wyoming State Health Officer Dr. Alexia Harrist said. Other bats weren't killed but got shooed out through cabin doors and windows. Meanwhile, the vast majority never flapped down from the attic into living spaces. Health officials thus deemed it better safe than sorry to alert everybody who has stayed in the cabins recently that they might have been exposed by being bitten or scratched. Especially when people are sleeping, a bat bite or scratch can go unseen and unnoticed. 'What we're really concerned about is people who saw bats in their rooms and people who might have had direct contact with a bat,' Harrist said Friday. The cabins have been unoccupied, with no plans to reopen, since concessionaire Grand Teton Lodge Company discovered the bat problem July 27. Bats are a frequent vector of the rabies virus. Once symptoms occur — muscle aches, vomiting, itching, to name a few — rabies is almost always fatal in humans. The good news is a five-shot prophylactic regimen over a two-week period soon after exposure is highly effective in preventing illness, Harrist noted. The cabins opened for the summer season in May after being vacant over the winter. Based on the roughly 250 reservations through late July, health officials estimated that up to 500 people had stayed in the cabins. They were trying to reach people in 38 states and seven countries through those states' health agencies and, in the case of foreign visitors, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Others who have not been alerted yet but stayed in cabins 516, 518, 520, 522, 524, 526, 528 and 530 this year should tell health officials or a doctor immediately, Harrist said. Health officials were recommending prophylactic shots for people who fit certain criteria, such as deep sleepers who found a bat in their room, and children too young to say that they had seen a bat. The Wyoming Department of Health had no ongoing concern about visitor safety at the Jackson Lake Lodge area. That includes a Federal Reserve economic policy symposium Aug. 21-23 that takes place at Jackson Lake Lodge every summer. 'The lodge company has done a fantastic job of doing their due diligence of making sure everyone that is coming in for that, and for all other visits this year, are going to be as safe as possible,' said Emily Curren, Wyoming's public health veterinarian. 'Three or four' dead bats from the cabins tested negative and one that was mangled did not have enough brain tissue to be testable, Curren said. All were brown bats, which come in two species: 'little' and 'big,' with the larger ones more than twice as big. Officials were unsure which species these were, but both are common in Wyoming. They typically live in colonies of 30 to 100 individuals, Curren said. 'That's a lot of bats that we cannot rule out a risk of rabies being in,' Curren said. 'There's no way for us to know for certain about every single bat that got into these rooms.' There are no plans to exterminate the bats, Grand Teton National Park spokesperson Emily Davis said. Devices fitted to the building were keeping the bats from getting back in after flying out in pursuit of insects to eat, they said. Sejal Govindarao And Mead Gruver (), The Associated Press
Globe and Mail
5 hours ago
- Globe and Mail
Novo Nordisk's Wegovy gets accelerated U.S. approval for liver disease
Novo Nordisk said on Friday the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had granted accelerated approval for its weight-loss drug Wegovy to treat a serious liver condition known as metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis. The decision makes Wegovy the first GLP-1 class therapy cleared for MASH, a progressive liver condition that affects around 5% of adults in the U.S., according to the American Liver Foundation. The approval is for use alongside a reduced-calorie diet and increased physical activity. The FDA's approval was based on part one of a two-part study that showed Wegovy helped more patients with MASH and liver scarring improve the organ's condition, compared to a placebo. At 72 weeks, nearly 37% of patients on Wegovy saw an improvement in liver fibrosis, compared to 22.4% on placebo. Nearly 63% of those on Wegovy had their liver inflammation resolved, versus 34.3% for placebo. No worsening of the disease was seen in these patients. Accelerated approvals allow the agency to move therapies that target serious and life-threatening conditions to the market more quickly. However, such approvals have been criticized because some drugs have later been proven to be ineffective.
Toronto Star
5 hours ago
- Toronto Star
Three years after his death, cricketer Shane Warne's legacy lives on with heart health checks
BRISBANE, Australia (AP) — Cricketer Shane Warne's legacy lives on more than three years after the death of the great spin bowler from a heart attack at the age of 52. Warne died in March 2022 after suffering cardiac arrest while on holiday on the Thai island of Koh Samui.
